Contests, competitiveness and achievement in Nonnus' Dionysiaca

Abstract

Nonnus’ interest in competition and in what is truly original, inherent in his own challenges to earlier authors, is present in the Dionysiaca’s numerous portrayals of the drive to achieve excellence and to be the first. This need to achieve, this intrinsically driven intentional competitiveness, is often swamped by an extrinsically driven structural competitiveness which needs to dominate and defeat, even humiliate, rivals.